Pope TV and the New World Mediaby Mike Whitney
www.dissidentvoice.org
April 12, 2005

The
24-hour-a-day “Pope-a-thon” shows the dramatic shift in the way that news is
covered. If a story is inoffensive to the political establishment or if it
serves their greater interests (like Schiavo) then it becomes an immediate
mega-story that swallows up most of the front page and consumes the majority
of TV time. In this way, the national dialogue is controlled by PR firms
working closely with Washington to decide what information is suitable for
public consumption. It’s perception management pure and simple but, so far,
it looks like a winning strategy. As many have already noticed, the Iraqi
bloodbath has been knocked out of the headlines and consigned to page 14
next to the women’s lingerie adverts. In its place, American’s are provided
with diversionary Uber-stories of vegetative housewives and dead Popes.
There’s no chance that the four Marines who died in insurgent attacks last
Tuesday will appear on page one anymore, nor will the 300,000 disgruntled
Iraqis who paraded through Baghdad yesterday calling for an end to the
Occupation while burning Bush in effigy. These are the unfortunate victims
of the new media regime; a system that dismisses inconvenient facts for the
fairy-tales that support the status quo. The new game plan is to sweep Iraq
from the collective consciousness and slow the steady erosion of public
support for the war.

The changes in news
coverage can be traced to a poll that ran three months ago in the
Washington Post that showed in stark terms how unpopular Bush’s war in
Iraq has become in just two short years. 56% of the people polled said the
war “wasn’t worth it” and a whopping 70% concluded that the loss of 1,500
American servicemen “was an unacceptable cost.”

The results of that
poll sent tremors through the political establishment, and their trepidation
is reflected in the way that the news is now presented. Ballplayers on
steroids, Schiavo and a dead Pope are just the first of what will certainly
be many similar entertaining distractions. Next week we will undoubtedly
discover that Schiavo was carrying Jacko’s love child.

For the most part,
Iraq has been buried by the media, a tacit admission that even supporters
are now experiencing both doubt about the wisdom of the war and overall
fatigue from the constant flow of bad news from the front. The casualties,
the chaos, the lack of reconstruction, and the demoralizing stories of
torture are slowly grinding down even the most ardent Bush fan. Beyond the
legal and moral questions, the war is starting to look like it was simply a
stupid idea conjured up by fanatics. This perception is not likely to
change. Once public support evaporates, that’s it. There’s no second chance.

The Bush team has a
serious problem and limited options. There’s no light in the Iraqi tunnel,
so the only choice is to manage the information. This explains why the media
would rather provide a front page pictorial of Bush performing his ablutions
in front of the velvet-encrusted Pope than show a close up of the helicopter
that went down in Afghanistan killing 18 American servicemen. Bush’s
Vatican junket is just more-of-the-same photo op claptrap designed to keep
the lens off the mountain of carrion building up in Iraq. It’s all part of
the imperial narrative dressed up in regal accoutrements and presented as
real news. Absent from the coverage were the thousands of incensed Italians
on the streets of Rome who were aghast that the world’s foremost war
criminal would be allowed to partake in the funereal ceremonies. Americans
never saw the angry masses that protested Bush’s visit. Instead, they got
the predictable pabulum from media operatives like Jim VandeHei of the
Washington Post who faithfully chronicled the pious nostrums from the
simpleton-and-chief.

“There’s no doubt in
my mind that there is a living God. And, no doubt in my mind that Lord,
Jesus Christ was sent by the Almighty. No doubt in my mind about that,” Bush
said.

Or this: “The tides of
moral relativism kind of washed around the Pope, but he stood strong as a
rock.”

Imagine someone who
just killed 100,000 human beings and authorized the use of torture on
prisoners palavering about “moral relativism”?

Despicable.

Nevertheless, the
fable-making media can be expected to maintain its present tack, inventing a
narrative from whole cloth and exploiting whatever novelty appears in
real-time to steer the public away Bush’s ruinous war. It’s what they do
best.

The Streetwalking Media

The press is the only
institution in American life that is protected by an Amendment. The founders
wisely understood that safeguarding the free flow of information was
imperative to the preservation of democracy. No one is so naïve to believe
in the myth of a free press anymore. The entire institution is like an aging
hooker locked in a conjugal embrace with her corporate bedfellow. The media
jettisoned whatever freedom or credibility it had years ago, choosing
instead to serve the narrow interests of its boardroom bosses. Now the news
is tailored to meet the needs of its clientele, shaping events to spread the
good news about free markets, consumerism and preemptive war. Whatever news
cannot be packaged and presented in a manner that serves the objectives of
its sponsors is simply left on the cutting room floor. What we see now when
we turn on the evening news isn’t a free press, but the front lines of
information warfare: “Who owns the news, who controls what you know?”

Information has been
weaponized to rob Americans of their personal liberty, plunder the treasury
and dupe the people into foreign adventures. The ideal of an “informed
public” actively engaged in the democratic process by exposure to a broad
variety of viewpoints is pure baloney. The daily news increasingly aims for
uniformity in their storyline to promote conformity of thought among its
readership. Diversity is a threat to the system. This being the case, we
shouldn’t be surprised that Rumsfeld is deliberately targeting reporters; it
is the logical extension of the prevailing political ethos. Information is
power, and now that power is the exclusive province of seven media giants
who are inextricably linked to the White House.

See No Evil

Don’t talk about a
“free press.” The American media showed their true colors in their handling
of the decimation of Falluja. The entire media stood by with their hands
over their mouths while a city of 250,000 was bombed to the ground in the
greatest single war crime in the last decade. The story of Falluja is a tale
of cluster bombs, napalm, depleted uranium, banned weapons, families crushed
in their homes, dogs devouring dead citizens on the city streets, and masses
of displaced people victimized by a vengeful and implacable enemy. It’s a
story of unspeakable crimes, of absolute impunity, and unfathomable
cynicism.

Even today, a full six
months after the siege, the story of Falluja cannot be revised enough to fit
into the imperial register, so the silence continues.

This is the reality of
America’s “free press”, the collaborative handmaiden of the US war machine,
partners in the destruction of entire civilizations. Eventually, it will
have to be chopped down to the root before anything worthwhile can grow up
in its place.